Welp, as embarrassing as it is, I’ve started reading Slashdot again. I know, I know… But my boss has been off for 2 weeks now, and I’m reading a lot more than I usually do (yeah, horrible employee, whatever you over-worked loser…).

So anyway, I was reading Slashdot for the first time in months just now, when I ran across this story about how the University of California has embraced a Linux-capable media download service to help stop the use of their network for P2P file sharing.

I took a look at the service indicated (Mindawn), and my first impression is great. Not only are they cross-platform capable (Windows, Mac, Linux, they love ‘em all!), but they’re also very realistic. If you read their Customer FAQ, you’ll see that they don’t enforce any kind of unrealistic DRM (Digital Rights Management) requirements on their users:

Q. What about copy protection?
A. A lot of noise has been made about Digital Rights Management (DRM) — mostly the record labels want it and the customers don’t. With something like iTunes or Napster, you are really just renting the song instead of owning it, because they limit what you can do with it.

However, on Mindawn, there is no difference in buying a perfect copy from us or having an original CD. You can still send around perfect copies if you want to. We believe that in general people don’t want to give away something that they paid for. We further believe that just because someone does happen to get a pirate copy doesn’t necessarily mean that is a lost sale. We feel that having happy customers by giving them free rein with what they paid for is going to be better for all of us in the long run.

We like to believe in the basic honesty in humanity, when people are treated fairly — so why should we impose more restrictions than are available on a typical music CD?

That’s a very realistic view on life, not to mention a much simpler one to implement technologically. DRM is a big deal, and they’re bound to get a lot of hype because they don’t use it, just like some slightly less than legitimate alternatives.

The only problem I see with this service is the content. They explain it pretty well in their FAQ as well:

Q. What kind of content can I expect?
A. You won’t likely find major label releases — we’re geared more towards supporting independent artists and small record labels. Our system is also not closed to anyone, and we are adding content at an exponential rate. You can use our sophisticated search technology to find music you will likely be interested in, as well as demo the available songs as mentioned above. You’re likely to discover some hidden gems that you wouldn’t have found any other way.

Unless I can’t find a specific artist (likely a smaller one) on iTunes, I don’t see that Mindawn will be much help. Without any of the larger record labels (which would require that they use some type of DRM on all their songs), Mindawn will face a very limited audience. It’ll be very interesting to see how well they do. Who knows, they may make such a killing that it’ll cause the music industry to wake up and take notice!